Nolition's CivIV Chronicle

[Nolition]

Civilization IV is my personal favourite game in the civilization series. With that being said, I have greatly enjoyed posting my Civ3 game in the Stories and Tales subforum and have decided to share my progress in Civilization 4 as well. Who knows - someone might actually read it and respond. Stranger things have happened! I am always looking to improve my play, and welcome all feedback.

 

[Nolition]

This is the first game I have ever played with the BUG mod, and I would particularly appreciate if anyone had any feedback on how I am using it. I'm still figuring some of the features out, but I am seeing how it is a massive improvement over the original game interface. I have played another set of 50 turns after this one which I have not written up yet, but other than that I will provide updates as they happen.

Spoiler Part 1 (hidden for quick page load) :

I enjoy selecting random civilizations, and look who pops up! I am currently playing a succession game with my partner where we were also randomly assigned Ramesses II. I guess I will be playing two games as Ramesses II simultaneously.





Here's a snapshot of the game settings. I have disabled city flipping from culture, vassal states, random events and tribal villages. I have also enabled the random personalities setting. All victory conditions are enabled except for Time and Diplomacy. I generally like to vary my settings between games.



Here's my starting location. Lots of resources on hand. Double cows, double ivory and spices.



I decide not to move, and settle in place. I begin building a worker and researching Animal Husbandry in order to make use of those cows. These will be finished at the same time.



Sending my warrior down south, I discover a vast jungle (despite the Arid climate) and make contact with Lincoln.



This is a map of the aforementioned jungle.



Animal Husbandry and worker completed. I start pasturing the cows, while building a few warriors and allowing Thebes to grow. Unfortunately, there are no horses nearby. The only source that I see is right next to the Americans in a location that is far too aggressive for me to snatch.



Montezuma finds me with a scout from the north.



I grab this one so that I can stick camps on the ivory.



My warrior provides an overview of the situation to the south.



Making use of BUG's nifty game-planning overlay, I start to plan out a dotmap. No more MSPaint! I've decided to put my cities a little closer than usual in this game, and I am curious to hear if anyone reading has any thoughts or suggestions as to how I could better place them.



I also send a warrior up north to begin exploring the desert. Climatically, this is a lot closer to what I was expecting than the lush jungles of the south. This fact confirms my desire to focus my settlement plans on the south. I begin to build a settler in Thebes. I want to expand quickly and claim as much of this territory as I can before the Americans can snatch it.



Without a source of Horses, it is necessary to begin working through the mining part of the tech tree. Hopefully I will have more luck with metal. And since I plan to be settling in the jungle, it is going to be necessary to get Iron Working (and a ton of workers) in order to transform that territory into productive space.



My initial warrior dies from a Bear attack, and I retreat from the animals in the north. Note the sudden transition from desert into tundra.



Zara Yaqob slips through the mountain pass to the north-east of Thebes. Apparently there is sizeable territory through it - at least enough to support one civilization.



I settle Memphis to the south. You can see on the leaderboard that I am the first civilization to found a second city.



This was a deviation from my planned Bronze-Working, but I felt that I needed the ability to build granaries soon in order to speed up my economic growth and prepare for efficient whipping.



The Koreans made contact with me. I am now suspecting that the Shuffle map has generated a Pangaean map.



You can see the location of Montezuma here. It also confirmed what I suspected about the water to the west of Thebes.



Tokugawa makes contact - also coming through the north-eastern passage.



I am also the first to settle my third city. Heliopolis begins its existence in a state of unhealthiness, caused by being buried deep in a miserable jungle. This city won't be useful for a long time, and will eventually be surrounded by cottages and used to generate research. It will also serve to keep the Americans contained, which is why I settled it before the more economically useful Red Dot location.

If you've made it this far - thanks for reading!

 

[Nolition]

Spoiler Part 2 (hidden for quick page load) :

I research this, hoping for Bronze within my territory.



It also brings the tremendous benefit of adopting Slavery. It's been a few games since I've played a spiritual civilization - the lack of anarchy is very helpful!



This is the only copper within my reach, and I resolve to send a settler up to claim it.



This was mostly researched because it was cheap, and because I will need the ability to work water tiles in the near future.



I send this warrior up to fogbust. I don't really have an effective military at all due to a lack of both metal and horses, and I am very worried that barbarians will spawn axemen in the desert. They are more likely to appear in desert and tundra tiles than others, so I want to get units up there to reduce that probability.



Elephantine is settled, making me the first civilization to four cities. The initial location I was eyeing was one square NW, but I decided to build on the floodplains. I've got access to the water, two floodplains, an oasis and some irrigated plains to work. Not to mention the copper and clams! Hardly a terrible location, all things considered.



I begin to try to improve my diplomatic situation and open up some trade routes.



I still don't have the ability to secure Open Borders with the others, due to a widespread lack of Writing in the world. I can also see on the BUG scoreboard that Tokugawa has begun to plot a war against someone. Hopefully not me!



Nice to be out of the ancient era, even if my research rate doesn't reflect it.



With this technology, the massive work of clearing the jungle begins. I'd been building workers for many turns prior to this, and have amassed a decently large workforce to meet the task.



And I am fortunate enough to have a source of Iron within my current cultural borders, even if it happens to sit in the one location not workable by any of my planned cities.



Judaism spreads, providing a bit of culture to expand Heliopolis' borders. I do not take it on as a state religion for diplomatic purposes.



With the appearance of the barbarian city, I change my settlement plans to accommodate another city in the western jungle.



This is my fogbusting warrior. There is another barbarian city, but it isn't giving me any trouble at the moment.



With this, I can build libraries and begin to get some culture and expand my borders. It also allows me to sign Open Borders agreements with Korea and the United States.



I do so, as the barbarian city is captured by Montezuma. He is refusing to sign Open Borders, and has more cities than me at this point.



I tie up the city-count with another hobbled jungle-city. My worker-army has mostly cleared Heliopolis, though, and can soon be dispatched to Pi-Ramesses.



The Iron is connected, and I begin making some abortive attempts to build a military.



Mathematics. I researched this for the chopping bonus (many of my worker actions were timed to coincide with this technology) and because I have plans to chop out the Great Library in Thebes. I set my sights on Aesthetics.



Buddhism spreads to Pi-Ramesses. Fortunate, because it allows cultural expansion before I build a Library. This time, I decide to convert as both Montezuma and Lincoln are Buddhist and they are my two closest neighbours. We also represent the three highest-scoring players. You can also see that Zara Yaqob has founded Yeha in the mountain pass.



Here is an overview of the current work that has been done on Heliopolis. Most workers have been diverted to Pi-Ramesses at this point. A settler is underway to claim the Red Dot location.

 

[need my speed]

Your city settling could use some improvement, in my opinion.

I see you settling cities one tile away from rivers and coasts (of seas and oceans), which is bad, because you lose potential trade / commerce, and because this prevents you from respectively building levees and lighthouses, harbours, custom houses, and drydocks.

You also settled on top of the flood plain. You replaced a 3/0/1 tile (flood plain) with a 2/1/1 tile (city). I get why you did it in this case; you want the copper. I'm unsure what I would have done in this specific situation - perhaps found a city on the desert in between the gold, stone, and copper (plus, with this city, you instantly get copper, instead of needing to invest production into expanding your city's border). But we also can't see more of the map yet. Usually, I'd have settled on the plains to the south or south east, as the city would still be next to the river and coast.

 

[Nolition]

Your city settling could use some improvement, in my opinion.

Thank you for your feedback!

Would you say that the following would be a superior settlement plan?

White Dot: 1N
Green Dot: 1W

I'm still a bit unsure about the ideal location of Elephantine. I did move over mainly to grab access to the water, but you're right that sticking it on the floodplain isn't ideal. I am thinking that moving it further into the desert would have been a better idea.

Please forgive the overall tone of this writeup. I usually am able to keep a positive frame of mind and have a lot of fun with civilization, but this was an exception. I usually find this game quite engaging and fun, however: this was an extremely frustrating set of turns, featuring me accidentally closing the game window (my mouse will randomly move to the top corner of the screen without warning) and having to reload an autosave and failing to re-create my moves exactly, resulting in rather worse combat luck than the original sequence. I also forgot some of the deals that I had made, and things just didn't work out as intended. Many of my saved screenshots were lost in some inexplicable mishap. Oh, and a fairly catastrophic misclick that resulted in half of my military getting destroyed that I let stand because that's life. I'm feeling quite demoralised at this point, but will have to try to soldier on as best I can. I've definitely made some pretty significant mistakes so far in this game (cities are struggling, research is a disjointed mess), and I am not sure that my abilities are strong enough to see me recover. I guess I'll just put it up here. I title this writeup:

The Wheels Come Off



I meet the Ottomans and establish Open Borders with Mehmed.



The Ethiopians extort me for Ivory. I agree, not wanting to take the anger for refusing tribute.



During the enforced-peace, I see that he has left this city completely undefended. I proceed to tunnel-vision on capturing it, ignoring all better options in favour of a conflict over a city that really doesn't matter. This was not a good idea, and I regret it fully.



Giza is settled, and I begin work on some infrastructure.



I got this for trade-bait, and because it leads to literature. My eventual plan is to chop out the Great Library and take advantage of my Industrious trait to get a strong wonder and begin generating great scientists.



Looking back, I am of the opinion that this was a poor trade from the WFYABTA point of view. I was feeling majorly behind because all of the AIs had a multitude of techs I did not, even if they were cheap.



This was a much better trade, for sure.



I declare war and move in on the Ethiopian city, defeating his chariots and archer in the plains. As you can also see, I am limping towards currency to attempt to revitalize my economy.



After the aforementioned mess with my game, Yeha is captured. I wasn't expecting the oasis, but this city is just.. not great. I also should have roaded that plains tile in my territory.



On the plus side, my warrior did defeat his chariot that had gotten behind my territory.



Realizing that I have no chance whatsoever of taking any of his more cultured cities without catapults, I decide that peace is the best option. Was this war worth a cheap technology, 25 gold and a tiny city with little prospects for greatness? Only time will tell.



Instead of moving into the city, I step outside and Japan makes me pay. What happened was: I have been playing a decent amount of civ3, and I right clicked reflexively in an attempt to view the tile information. This moved my stack of units by mistake. Oops! Tokugawa attacked immediately. He captured the city and destroyed all of my units. This is the danger of random personalities - I was not expecting Tokugawa to come after me after making a number of trades and allowing open borders.



At least I did get currency.



I leverage Aesthetics into more cheap religious techs. Polytheism allows me the ability to research Literature immediately.

Which brings us to the current situation. Montezuma has just started plotting, and I am quite certain that he has eyes on my territory. Tokugawa will not consider peace, and I have just a few military units at this point. Destruction seems imminent. I will take this game as a learning experience, for sure, and I am certain that I will be able to view this in a less frustrated light come morning.

 

[need my speed]

Thank you for your feedback!

Would you say that the following would be a superior settlement plan?

White Dot: 1N
Green Dot: 1W

That is actually hard for me to say, because I play Civilization IV with a minimum of one tile in between cities, as opposed to the standard rule of needing two tiles in between. And one-tile lakes allow me to build lighthouses and such as well, in my mod. But in general, yes, that would be better (though I can't really map out how I would fill in the entire land displayed on the screenshot, and depending on where I would put other cities, I might end up deciding to not put white 1N and green 1W).